


Lou Miller's Home for Wayward Girls

by theothersusan



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's Eight
Genre: F/F, Heist Household, Heist Wives, Lou breaking and entering for a good cause, Lou raised herself, Tammy's POV for some unknown reason, can't a girl like Patsy Cline?, don't act like you're surprised that Nine Ball smokes weed, gambling with candy, girls wearing ties, parenting is not for the faint of heart, past domestic violence described, seriously what even, the suburbs are extremely heteronormative, this kind of got away from me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-27 13:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15025481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theothersusan/pseuds/theothersusan
Summary: On an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday morning almost a year after the Toussaint heist, Tammy answers her doorbell to a team of FBI agents.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted Tammy and her kids interacting with the crew, and somehow this ended up happening. It's possible that more of it may eventually happen, but I make no promises.

On an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday morning almost a year after the Toussaint heist, Tammy answers her doorbell to a team of FBI agents. 

In an unbelievable stroke of good luck, she is both holding a Swiffer and literally baking cookies, and twenty minutes later one Special Agent Carl Anderson is sitting in her kitchen drinking milk and wiping a melted chocolate chip off his tie and explaining to her in the gentlest possible terms that her husband might just possibly have gotten himself involved in something a little bit illegal.

Tammy somehow manages not to faint from relief. Or to laugh in his face, because really, what kind of fool does he think she is? This isn’t an interview. They have a warrant, and they’re tossing the house. (Thankfully, there’s nothing more incriminating in her garage these days than the requisite six plastic tubs of Christmas decorations.) She has no idea what’s going on here, but it’s clear that Duane is in deep shit.

And whatever they’re looking for, they apparently find it, because suddenly they’re boxing up Duane’s computer, and Special Agent Carl is apologetically explaining that she’s going to have to come with them, just for a little while, just until all this can be straightened out, because it’s clear that she wasn’t involved, but is there someone else the kids can stay with for a few days?

So she calls Debbie, who stays remarkably calm, all things considered. 

“Of course we’ll pick up the kids. Just tell me the name of their school.”

“They may not even let you have them,” Tammy says, beginning to panic in spite of her best efforts. “You’re not on the list.”

“Seriously, Tim-Tam?” Debbie demands, and Tammy recognizes this as the closest thing to  _ I got over four hundred fifty million dollars’ worth of jewels out of the Met, and you don’t think I can spring two children from a suburban elementary school? _ that Debbie is willing to say into Tammy’s probably-tapped-by-the-FBI phone. “Do not worry about the kids. Lou and I will handle it.”

It doesn’t occur to Tammy until she’s miles from the house in the back of an unmarked black SUV that she’s not even completely sure Debbie knows her children’s names.

The Feds don’t let her go for three and a half days, and she spends every single minute imagining the worst. By the time she finally flings herself out of the cab that delivers her to Lou’s place very early on the fourth morning, she’s worked herself into such a state that she honestly expects to find Debbie and Lou tied to chairs and Tommy and Danica running rampant over the place like something out of  _ Lord of the Flies. _

What she actually finds when Lou answers the door is even more shocking.

The kids are sitting at the table in their very own pajamas, their little bare feet dangling, carefully using plastic knives to cut up bananas for the fruit salad Debbie is making. Both of them appear to have had baths recently, and Danica’s hair is neatly braided, and they are honest-to-God  _ sharing a cutting board _ without fighting like cats and dogs.

“Did you drug them?” Tammy blurts, and the kids hear her voice, and the next few minutes are a wonderful blur of hugs and tears and the deepest relief Tammy has ever felt.

The kids stop crying faster than she does, and then both of them are suddenly talking at once, and it’s information overload. They have bunk beds here, and tonight it will be Tommy’s turn to have the top bunk, and of course they took turns, because the rules are different here, and you can either take turns or sleep on the floor. Aunt Debbie took them to the zoo, and they saw monkeys and a lion and pink birds and a huge snake and got to pet a goat, and did Mommy know that goats like to climb on things just like Danica does? They have bicycles here, too, and Danica’s has training wheels but Tommy’s doesn’t, and Uncle Lou doesn’t even care if they ride them inside the house as long as they wear helmets.

Tammy looks up over the kids’ heads, finds Lou standing at the stove studying the contents of her omelet pan with more concentration than is probably strictly necessary, and catches Debbie’s eye instead.  _ Uncle Lou? _ she mouths.

Debbie gives her back a  _ We’ll explain later _ look, which is just as well, really, because breakfast is ready, and Tammy hasn’t slept in three days, and her brain is already on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

After they eat, Tommy and Danica help Lou clear the table--she doesn’t even have to ask them--and Debbie half-drags Tammy up the stairs and shoves her toward the nearest bathroom. “Shower. Try not to drown. Sleep as long as you want. We’ll all be fine for one more day.”

Ten hours later, Tammy feels a lot more human. She gets up, gets dressed in a set of her own clothes that someone has conveniently left out for her, and heads downstairs...only to find everyone else asleep. Debbie is curled up in the papasan chair, and Lou is dead to the world on the couch with both of the kids sprawled over her like puppies. Clearly Debbie wasn’t kidding about everybody being fine, so Tammy wanders back upstairs and opens doors at random until she finds the kids’ room, which is next to hers and one away from Lou’s. In fact, it’s the room that was Debbie’s room during the heist. Tammy isn’t terribly puzzled about where Debbie is sleeping these days, and it’s about goddamn time.

Tammy  _ is _ terribly puzzled about a lot of other things, including where the hell she’s supposed to go from here.

“You don’t have to figure everything out today, you know.”

She startles and turns to find Debbie leaning against the doorjamb, still wrapped in her blanket from downstairs.

“Lou and the kids will be zonked for a while,” Debbie says in answer to the question Tammy hasn’t even voiced. “They were out back kicking a soccer ball around for like four hours.”

“I don’t even know what to say,” Tammy admits.  _ “Thank you _ seems so inadequate.”

“We’re your friends.”

Tammy blinks back tears. “I know.” She casts about for something, anything, to distract herself from wanting to cry. “Did you have any trouble picking them up?”

Debbie grins. “Of course not. I’m your sister, and I was on their check-out lists.”

Tammy stares at her for a second before the penny drops. “Nine Ball.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“And who…?” Tammy gestures vaguely at the room around them, indicating the bunk beds and the toy chest and the stuffed animals and the books.

“Nine Ball and Veronica and Constance and Lou. Mostly Lou.”

Tammy bends down and picks up a too-familiar stuffed turtle, and at this point she’s not even really surprised to see the familiar, slightly mismatched thread holding its left front leg on. “This is Tommy’s,” she says slowly. “Debbie, our house was under surveillance by the FBI. How the hell did Lou--”

“Through your master bathroom window, apparently. She says you need better locks.”

“I’m never going back to that house.” Tammy didn’t even know that was true until she said it out loud, but there it is. That life is over, if it ever even really existed in the first place.

And Debbie chooses that moment to say, “Tammy, what did Duane do?”

“Kiddie porn.”

Debbie’s eyes go wide, then flick in the direction of the staircase. “Jesus, did he--”

“No,” Tammy says quickly. “Not our kids. But someone’s kids. They showed me some of the pictures, Deb. I threw up.”

“Oh, honey.”

Tammy loses her battle with the tears, and the next thing she knows she’s on the floor with Debbie and the blanket wrapped around her, crying until she can’t breathe. Because her soon-to-be-ex husband is a sicko and because her kids are suddenly fatherless, but also because Debbie and Nine Ball and Veronica and Lou and Constance have been so good and kind and wonderful.

“I didn’t even think Lou liked me,” she sobs at one point, and Debbie rocks her and tells her soothingly that Lou forgave her years ago for that thing that happened, that Lou was the one who suggested her for the Toussaint heist, that Lou thinks the kids are amazing and Tammy is a great mother, that it’s fine with Lou if they want to stay here.

It takes a while for all of that to sink in, but eventually Tammy draws back and scrubs her hands over her face and forces her wrecked voice to work. “We can’t just stay here, Deb. The kids need…” And she realizes she has absolutely no idea where she’s going with that. “School,” she finally says, grasping at straws. “They have to go to school.”

“Well, sure, but there’s a magnet school just a few miles from here. Nine Ball can transfer their records. It’ll be easy.”

Tammy resists the urge to tell Debbie that nothing about raising kids is easy, partly because she’s aware of how bitter that would come out sounding and partly because if the last few days are any kind of evidence, Debbie and Lou haven’t exactly been struggling with the practice of child rearing.

“I don’t know,” she says instead. “I don’t have any idea what to do, and that’s the truth.”

“So we’ll talk about it,” Debbie says easily. “All three of us, after the kids are asleep. C’mon, get yourself cleaned up. I think I hear Danica.”

By the time Tammy gets back downstairs, everyone is definitely awake, and their numbers have multiplied. The stereo is blaring the most eclectic playlist Tammy has ever heard (seriously, Weird Al sandwiched in between HooplaKidz and Beyoncé?), and dinner preparations are in progress in a whirlwind of controlled chaos that would do most commercial kitchens proud. Debbie is pounding chicken cutlets, Lou is chopping fresh herbs, Constance is making a salad, Nine Ball is draining pasta, and Veronica is supervising while the kids set the table.

“Can I help?” Tammy asks uncertainly over the din.

“Open the wine,” Lou calls back.

Tammy does, and the next thing she knows Danica is at her side, Lou’s iPad cradled carefully in both hands. “Now you can have music, Mommy.”

Lou appears at her elbow before Tammy can get any more confused. “House rules,” she explains, effortlessly hoisting Danica onto one of the stools at the breakfast counter so that she can stir the salad dressing. “Only people who help get to add to the playlist.”

“That is  _ genius,” _ Tammy says with real respect, and Lou grins.

“Add something. You earned it.”

Tammy throws some Little River Band into the mix, and when it comes on a surprising number of other voices join her in singing along with the chorus.

_ Hang on, help is on its way, I’ll be there as fast as I can… _

Slowly, the tight knot in Tammy’s chest begins to uncoil. She’s not okay-- _ okay _ is going to take more than a few days--but she doesn’t feel like she’s about to fly apart at the seams anymore. Yes, her sleazeball of a soon-to-be-ex husband is in jail, and her house is a crime scene. But she and Tommy and Danica are safe and surrounded by family, and that makes them incredibly blessed compared to a lot of people.

Once she’s out of her own head enough to notice, she realizes that there’s enough food being made here to feed a small army. “Deb, how many people are eating dinner here?”

“Oh, Rose and Daphne are back in town--” They’ve been filming on location in...somewhere...Tammy vaguely recalls. “--and Amita’s plane landed thirty minutes ago.”

And Tammy tears up a little again, because she suspects that the entire crew is making a deliberate effort to rally around her.

By the time the eleven of them sit down to dinner, she’s relaxed enough to tease. “Wow, Lou, I didn’t know you were running a boarding house now.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking of mounting a sign out front: Lou Miller’s Home for Wayward Girls.”

“Hey!” Tommy says indignantly.

“And boy,” Lou adds, and everyone laughs.

The kids are introduced to everyone they haven’t already met, which only leads to further hilarity. By the end of the salad course Daphne is Aunt Daffy because Danica still struggles with certain combinations of consonants, and Amita is Aunt Mouse because she’s made the serious tactical error of inviting the kids to call her by the Hindi word for aunt, which is apparently  _ mausi. _

Then the chicken marsala hits the table, and Danica says clear as day, “Will you dip me some, Uncle Lou? I can’t reach.”

It’s Daphne who says, “Did she just call you  _ Uncle _ Lou?”

“You can take that one up with Tim-Tam,” Debbie answers for Lou. “Apparently the suburbs are  _ extremely _ heteronormative.”

Over the course of the next several minutes it emerges that Tommy and Danica are both a little confused because Lou kisses Debbie-- _ On the mouth,  _ Tommy clarifies, just in case anyone was unsure about that point--so of course they can’t both be girls. And also Lou dresses like a boy, sort of, which seems to have further muddied the waters.

And Tammy is horrified, because she had realized that the suburbs were pretty white-bread, but she hadn’t realized they were actually damaging her children.

“Some girls kiss boys, and some girls kiss girls, and either is fine,” she says clearly, not wanting to risk any further misunderstanding.

Tommy doesn’t look particularly shocked--he’s a seven-year-old boy, and  _ all _ kissing is gross--but Danica is obviously struggling.

“You’re really a girl?” she asks, looking across the table at Lou.

Lou nods in confirmation.

“But you wear ties. And you kiss Aunt Debbie. And those are boy things.”

“No, ties are for anyone who likes ties,” Lou answers, her tone gentle but firm. “And Aunt Debbie gets to decide who kisses her, and she picked me.”

Danica’s brows knit as she takes that in. “So you can be a girl...and kiss a girl...and be pretty...and like ties...and that’s okay?”

“Yes,” Lou and Tammy say together, to a chorus of general agreement around the table.

And Danica's gaze sort of turns inward, and for a moment she is completely still, and then she looks...relieved? Tammy’s not sure how to interpret that look, because it’s there for an instant and then gone completely, replaced by the smile that means Danica is proud of herself for figuring something out.

“Okay, I get it,” she says, then switches tracks as only a five-year-old can. “May I have some chicken now, please, Aunt Lou?”

And everybody goes back to dipping food and eating and talking and laughing, and Tammy loves all of them even more than she already did.

Much later, when the others have gone home and the kids are asleep, Tammy settles into the papasan chair with another glass of wine and lets Lou and Debbie talk her into staying with them until the end of the school year, which is clearly code for pretty much forever.

She knows it sounds insane. Sure, raise your kids in a half-converted warehouse intermittently filled with obscenely wealthy thieves. What could possibly go wrong?

But Tommy and Danica have already been uprooted once, and Debbie and Lou are clearly sincere about wanting the three of them to stay, and Tammy is going to have to testify against Duane while still managing an operation that moves about sixty percent of the stolen goods east of the Mississippi on any given day, and she doesn’t care how insane it sounds because this is  _ working, _ and Tammy is a big fan of not fixing what isn’t broken.

Later still, lying awake on the mattress she’s dragged into the kids’ room so that she can hear them breathing, Tammy slowly comes to the realization that she’s happy for the first time in so long she’s forgotten what it felt like. She never loved Duane, not really, and he was home so little that the kids barely knew him, and being suddenly free of him and the house and all the rest of it makes her want to run in circles whooping like a madwoman. But the kids are asleep, so she contents herself with lying there in the dark grinning like an idiot and listening to the faint sound of Debbie and Lou laughing down the hall.

And for the first time since she was eleven years old, she sends a little prayer out to anyone who might be listening:

_ Thank you. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorrynotsorry for the kids' names. In my head-canon, Tammy's husband is both unimaginative and a NASCAR fan.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life goes on in the Heist Household, and something important is settled.

As it turns out, Tammy doesn’t have to testify against Duane, nor does she have to divorce him. All she has to do is sign a piece of paper releasing his mortal remains for cremation, because he started a fight with the wrong guy in lockup while awaiting trial. He was apparently beaten to death with a pipe, which Tammy can’t help thinking was too good for him, considering some of what was on his computer.

She still has to tell Tommy and Danica that their father is dead, and there are some tears, but really, Duane wasn’t exactly involved in their lives. Most times he had a hard time remembering how old they were. The fact that Daddy isn’t coming home isn’t a crushing blow to either of them.

For her part, Tammy feels nothing but relief. Duane’s death is just a series of items crossed off her to-do list, and it’s not as if she had him killed. Signing the paperwork for his final arrangements is actually less emotionally fraught than hiring movers to pack up the contents of her house and bring it all to Lou’s place to be sorted out. So far the boxes are still unopened, but they’re not in the way, and Lou and Debbie haven’t said one word about them.

Nine Ball really did get the kids into school, and the transition seems to have gone reasonably well, which is to say that neither of them has flunked out or gotten into a fight. (Not that Tammy was particularly worried about Danica failing pre-K because she’s not even sure that’s possible, but she had been a little bit concerned about Tommy. His previous teacher had made some noises about him possibly needing to repeat first grade since he couldn’t seem to keep his addition facts straight.) They both miss their friends from their old school, of course, and it’s hard to make new ones in just six weeks in classes that have already been established for eight months, but overall it seems to be going okay.

Right up until the very last week of school, when Tommy’s teacher Mrs. Fradwick suddenly calls and asks Tammy to come in for a conference. Fortunately Debbie is home when she gets that message, because it triggers a little bit of an anxiety attack, and Debbie ends up having to give her a pep talk and a shot of Jack to keep her from losing it completely.

The school knows because she told them that the kids recently lost their father, so when the morning of the conference comes Tammy is totally ready to throw herself on Mrs. Fradwick’s mercy on Tommy’s behalf. But that’s not necessary, as it turns out, since what the conference is actually about is that they want to put Tommy in the gifted class next year because--and this is the part Tammy thinks they must surely have gotten wrong--Tommy is the top math student in the first grade.

She manages to stop herself from blurting,  _ But he can’t even add,  _ and instead forces herself to listen to Mrs. Fradwick, who is still talking.

“...just never seen a first-grader who could already divide, so if your sister would consider sharing those flashcards, we would all really appreciate it.”

“My sister?” Tammy manages, still processing the idea that her you-really-should-think-about-having-him-tested-for-a-learning-disability little boy is apparently gifted now.

“Well, one of them,” Mrs. Fradwick says sheepishly. “Tommy talks so much about all his aunts that I can hardly keep up.”

“I’ll ask her what system she’s been using,” Tammy manages, and signs the paperwork for Tommy’s gifted placement, and then drives home in a daze to find Debbie standing at the kitchen sink rinsing strawberries.

“Have you been helping Tommy with his math?” she asks without preamble.

“I didn’t know he needed help,” Debbie answers. “Why?”

“Because he’s suddenly a genius, and his teacher wants to know what kind of flashcards we’ve been using.”

Debbie’s puzzled expression clears, and she laughs a little. “Oh, that. I think you want Lou. She’s in the garage.”

So Tammy gamely walks out to the garage, where Lou is sprawled beneath her half-disassembled motorcycle in a coverall so covered in grease that Tammy can’t tell what color it originally was.

“Hey, Tam,” Lou says. “How’d the conference go?”

“They’re putting him in gifted ed,” Tammy says, still sounding exactly as stunned as she feels.

Lou sits up and wipes her hands on a rag. “Okay, I don’t know much about American schools, but isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yes, but I don’t understand. He used to be terrible at math, but now Mrs. Fradwick says he can divide, and she wants to know what you’ve been doing, because apparently Tommy said something about flashcards?”

A series of expressions quicksilver across Lou’s mobile face--puzzlement followed by chagrin followed by amusement, if Tammy has followed them correctly. 

“Not flashcards,” she says after a moment. “I’ve been teaching him to  _ count cards.” _

For a moment Tammy can only gape at her. “You taught a seven-year-old to cheat at blackjack?!”

“It’s not cheating,” Lou says virtuously, “not if you do all the math in your head. Which he can, so they’re not wrong about the gifted thing.”

Tammy opens her mouth, then closes it again, considering that. Counting cards is hardly rocket science, but you do have to keep up with a running addition/subtraction/division calculation every time a card is dealt. Tommy shouldn’t be able to do that, not yet, not according to any curriculum guide the school has ever sent home. She runs through a mental rolodex of possible reactions and finally settles on pride.

“How gifted are we talking?” 

“He can keep a true count on six decks without breaking a sweat,” Lou answers, “so I’m thinking several standard deviations above the mean.”

* * *

When Tammy picks the kids up from school that afternoon, she asks Tommy outright why he’s suddenly doing so much better in math.

“Worksheets are stupid,” he answers, shrugging. “Winning at games is fun.”

Tammy can hardly fault his logic.

That night after dinner, Tommy and Lou put on a little demonstration, in which Tommy takes the house for a stunning number of M&Ms. Tammy is impressed and says so. Tommy is very proud of himself, which is nice to see. Lou just seems relieved that Tammy isn’t going to kill her in her sleep for teaching a first-grader casino games. 

But later, when the kids are in bed and the three resident grown-ups are sitting around in the living room sipping red wine, it’s Lou who says, “You know, if you don’t want all of us to teach them what we know, you need to say so. Because Danica spent the afternoon with Constance again, and now  _ both _ of my watches are missing.”

“Oh, God,” Tammy says, and drops her head back against the papasan chair, which has become her regular seat. Debbie and Lou are, as always, draped over some combination of the couch and each other.

“Wait, do you  _ not _ want them to become criminals?” Debbie asks, sounding genuinely surprised.

“I don’t know. I mean, I want them to choose for themselves.” She hesitates, then lets herself go ahead and ask. “Did you feel like you had a choice when you were a kid, growing up the way you did? Or was there just this looming expectation that you become a criminal mastermind?”

Debbie doesn’t seem offended by the question. If anything, she looks like she rather likes the sound of the phrase  _ criminal mastermind. _

“I knew I had a choice. It’s not as if Dad ever sat me down and told me I had to become a con artist. If I’d wanted to be an astronaut or something my folks would have been fine with that.”

Lou laughs. “Your Dad would have stolen you a Space Shuttle.”

“Probably, yeah,” Debbie agrees.

Tammy takes a moment to consider what Debbie has said, then without really thinking about it says, “What about you, Lou? Did you also grow up in a criminal dynasty?”

The question falls heavily into the room, and Tammy realizes too late that she has unknowingly stepped off into very deep water.

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “It’s none of my busi--”

Lou waves her off. “No, it’s okay. You didn’t know.”

And of course Tammy  _ still _ doesn’t know, but she’s not about to ask again, not when Debbie is giving her a look that makes Tammy want to melt through the floor and drain away.

“She doesn’t like to talk about her childhood,” Debbie says flatly.

Tammy holds up her hands, palms outward in the universal gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry. I never meant--”

But Lou says again, “It’s okay,” and then she turns toward Debbie and leans into her line of sight so that Debbie stops glaring at Tammy and looks at Lou instead, and Tammy can see Debbie’s eyes soften.

“Stand down, babe,” Lou murmurs, barely audible. “I’m fine. It’s Tammy, and she’s family.”

“I know that,” Debbie murmurs back, “but I don’t want you to feel like you have to--”

Lou silences her with a soft kiss, and Tammy looks away, feeling like she’s intruding on something extraordinarily intimate.

A minute or so later Debbie clears her throat and says, sounding slightly amused, “It’s safe to look, Tim-Tam. We’re done having a moment.”

Tammy turns back to find that Debbie and Lou have rearranged themselves so that Lou is leaning back against Debbie, cradled against her chest. The strange tension has gone as quickly as it arrived, and Debbie doesn’t tense when Lou begins to speak.

“I grew up in an orphanage,” she says, looking down at her hands, “because my father beat my mother to death with an axe handle in front of me when I was four years old. So while I am certainly the child of a criminal, it’s not a heritage I’m particularly proud of. Nor did it make me all that popular with the nuns or my fellow orphans, all of whom seemed to think I was likely to come unhinged and kill somebody, too. I ran away when I was nine, and I don’t think anyone even looked for me.”

“Jesus, Lou,” Tammy whispers, feeling like she’s been kicked in the stomach.

“And now you know why I don’t have kids,” Lou says wryly, but Tammy can hear something raw layered beneath the dark humor.

Suddenly, a lot of things about Lou that have always puzzled her make perfect sense. Like the fact that Lou never throws the first punch. In twenty years Tammy has never seen Lou start a fight. She’s seen her finish quite a few, usually in defense of Debbie--once, memorably, in defense of Tammy herself--but she’s never seen Lou provoked to violence by anything short of violence. Because, she now understands, Lou has spent her entire life haunted by the specter of a kind of brutality that Tammy honestly can’t even imagine.

But if you hurt someone Lou cares about, she will not hesitate to fuck you up, and this makes that make sense, too. Lou’s hands are covered with scars she’s earned protecting her chosen family in the way she couldn’t protect her mother. She’s fought for Debbie and for Tammy and even for Danny and Rusty, back in the day, and Tammy doesn’t doubt for one second that if anybody ever laid hands on Tommy or Danica, Lou would fucking  _ end _ them.

“Lou,” she says as gently as she can manage, “you  _ do _ have kids.”

Lou’s eyes go wide.

“She’s right, honey,” Debbie murmurs. “I know we never really talked about it, but here we are.”

Lou shakes her head. “No, that isn’t… I mean, I don’t…  We aren’t…” She gives up on words and sort of sketches a triangle in the air with her hand in the space between herself and Debbie and Tammy.

Amazingly, Tammy manages to parse that before Debbie does. 

"Oh, my God, Lou, no, that’s not what I meant!” she blurts, and can’t stop herself from laughing.

Lou doesn’t seem to know whether she’s relieved or confused.

By this point Debbie is laughing helplessly too. “Oh, babe, the look on your face right now…”

Tammy takes pity on Lou and attempts to clarify. “I was just talking about the kids, Lou, not anything that might  _ or might definitely not  _ be going on between the three of us.” Because one, Tammy is straight (most of the time), and two, Debbie and Lou are such a universe unto themselves that she doubts there would be room to shoehorn her in there even if she were the gayest woman on the planet.

“Oh.” Lou’s expression is definitely relief now. “Okay, good, because I like you, Tammy, but--”

“I get it,” Tammy assures her.

“Then...wait, what did you mean about me having kids? Because you’re their mother, Tam, and I know that, and so does Debbie.”

Tammy looks at Debbie and raises an eyebrow.

“I think what Tammy meant,” Debbie says carefully, “is that the three of us are basically co-parenting now.”

“But I don’t know anything about kids,” Lou says, and both of them just gape at her. “What?” she asks after a moment.

“You don’t have a lot of preconceived notions about kids,” Tammy corrects, trying not to laugh again when Lou is so obviously serious, “and that’s probably why you’re so amazing with them.”

“So you’re just...okay with this?” Lou asks slowly.

Tammy nods. It’s not even that weird, really. Kids whose parents divorce and remarry end up with four parents. She seriously doubts that having three is going to do Tommy and Danica any harm, and Debbie and Lou are indisputably an upgrade on Duane.

Lou’s gaze shifts to Debbie, one blond brow arching in question.

“Hundred percent,” Debbie says.

“Well, here’s to future criminal masterminds, then,” Lou says, and stretches to reach her wine glass.

They toast, and Tammy can’t help thinking that ten or fifteen years from now New York may not know what hit it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tammy is an amazing mother. But that's not all she is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're just here for the kid!fic, you may want to pass on this chapter, as the kids are elsewhere, and it involves grown-ups doing grown-up things. I decided a change of rating wasn't really warranted, but your mileage may vary. (We're talking sex, drugs, and Patsy Cline here, people. Govern yourselves accordingly.)

On the last day of the kids’ summer vacation, Debbie and Lou get them up early and take them to the water park so that Tammy can have a day to sleep in before resuming early-morning carpool duty. Not that Tammy has ever really minded the 7AM car-rider line all that much, since she’s a morning person anyway, but it’s still a sweet gesture, especially since it requires Debbie and Lou (who are very decidedly  _ not _ morning people) to get up at the crack of dawn and wrangle two wildly excited children.

So Tammy does her best to get into the spirit of the thing even though being unproductive for an entire day isn’t really in her nature. She lazes in bed until nearly ten and then soaks for a full hour in the tub in the hall bathroom. It’s one of those ancient cast-iron monstrosities with the feet that look like claws, and it keeps water hot basically forever. Staying in it all day would not be a hardship.

But the need for food eventually drives her from the bath, and she rakes her damp hair into a ponytail, throws on some pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt, and heads downstairs to see what she can rustle up. The house is very quiet with everyone gone, and she takes the opportunity to put on her twangiest country playlist, the one that always makes Constance plead with her to turn it off before her ears start to bleed. A quick rummage through the fridge produces a variety of potential omelet ingredients, and Tammy is sort of dancing around the kitchen in a way that would be totally embarrassing if anyone was there to see her--

\--when Nine Ball’s voice speaks from the living area. 

“I’m gon’ guess you didn’ see me here.”

Tammy lets out a high-pitched squeak and whirls around with her hand over her heart like a heroine out of a Harlequin romance, to find Nine Ball sprawled on one of the beanbags looking insufferably amused.

“Are you trying to kill me?” she demands when she regains enough breath to speak.

“Nah,” the hacker says languidly. “But I can clear out if you want. Didn’ mean to fall asleep here anyway.”

Belatedly, Tammy realizes that her music must have awakened Nine Ball.

Her music,  _ which is still playing. _

She dives for the iPad to turn it off. “God, sorry.”

“Never apologize for Patsy Cline,” Nine Ball replies, rising gracefully from the beanbag and arching into a full-body stretch that makes Tammy’s lower back twinge just watching her.

Wait, what? 

“You know Patsy Cline?”

“She got a good voice,” Nine Ball answers, and folds herself in half so that her entire upper body is upside down to shake out her dreads.

Tammy forces herself to look away. She no longer remembers quite what was on her agenda for today, but she’s pretty sure checking out Nine Ball’s ass wasn’t on the list.

Nine Ball stands upright again, hitches up her baggy jeans, tugs her hoodie down, and somehow manages not to look as if she slept in her clothes. On a beanbag. On the floor.

Tammy, who is pretty sure she herself looks like an extra from  _ Real Housewives of the Trailer Park _ right now, tries not to hate her.

“Would you like an omelet?” she hears herself say, because her latent Southern hospitality gene never fails to rise up and bite her at the least convenient times.

Nine Ball looks pleasantly surprised by the offer. “Really?”

“Sure. It’s not that hard to crack a few more eggs.”

“Yeah, then. Thanks.”

Tammy makes a couple of pieces of toast first, because she’s starving, and slathers them both with Nutella before handing one to Nine Ball, who has settled on a stool at the breakfast counter. Rose got the entire crew hooked on Nutella during the runup to the heist, and now Lou buys it by the case. Of course, an alarming number of those jars seem to disappear into Debbie and Lou’s bedroom, but that’s a fact Tammy tries not to examine too closely.

“You check the label?” Nine Ball asks before taking a bite, and both of them crack up.

Because after a house party couple of weeks ago an extremely hungover Constance accidentally got into Lou’s Vegemite instead, with memorably hilarious results. She’ll never live it down, and that would be true even if Amita  _ hadn’t _ realized what was about to happen and filmed it for YouTube.

Tammy finishes her toast in four bites and gets to work on the omelets, motivated to do the thing up properly now that she has an audience. An oddly attentive audience, in fact, as Nine Ball seems inordinately fascinated by watching her chop peppers.

It’s a little unnerving. Of the whole crew, Nine Ball is the one Tammy finds hardest to read. The hacker doesn't talk much about her personal life, and aside from the fact that she obviously loves her sister to the moon and back, Tammy has very little idea what makes Nine Ball tick. In a houseful of exhibitionists and over-sharers, she's as much an outlier as Tammy herself is.

“I can’t  _ possibly _ be the first woman who’s ever cooked you breakfast,” Tammy finally says, not looking up from her cutting board.

Nine Ball coughs as some toast apparently goes down the wrong pipe. 

“You  _ wrong _ for that,” she finally manages, but she’s laughing.

“You were staring,” Tammy answers, because it’s true.

“Yeah. And?”

Tammy hesitates, almost certain she has to be misreading this, because surely Nine Ball isn’t actually flirting with her? So instead of answering aloud, she picks up one of the strips of pepper she hasn’t gotten around to mincing yet and holds it out in the hacker’s direction, low enough that she could take it with her hand but high enough that she could--

And she does, leaning across the counter to nip the morsel from Tammy’s fingertips in a brief flash of white teeth.

Okay, yes, definitely flirting. Tammy remembers how to do that. She hopes.

“Let me guess,” she says, returning to her chopping. “You’re usually the one cooking breakfast for them.”

“I can be a gentleman,” Nine Ball answers, sounding amused. “If you’re into that.”

“And hypothetically if I wasn’t?”

“I could work with that, too.”

Tammy carefully lays the knife aside and looks up, making eye contact. “Okay, do you actually want an omelet or not? Because I like having all my fingers.”

Nine Ball drops her gaze to Tammy's hands in a very deliberate way, then looks up again and does a thing with her eyebrow that is somehow more suggestive than the most x-rated comment she could possibly have made. 

Aloud she says only, “I'll behave.”

Tammy doubts that, but Nine Ball proves to be as good as her word, sliding off the stool to go set the table and pour orange juice for both of them. Tammy manages to finish her chopping without incident, now that she no longer needs the knife to cut through all the unexpected sexual tension.

They eat, and the only thing that's weird about it is how completely not weird it is. They end up talking--or rather, Nine Ball talks and Tammy listens--about how Veronica will be leaving for MIT in less than a month and Nine Ball is a little afraid of how quiet their apartment is going to be without her.

“How long have you two been on your own?” Tammy asks without thinking, then winces internally, fully expecting Nine Ball to tell her to fuck off.

“Ten years,” Nine Ball says instead, and even anticipates Tammy’s next question. “Since I was fourteen.”

Tammy tries to imagine herself at fourteen, a freshman in high school, suddenly alone in the world with a child Tommy's age to raise. It’s unfathomable. No wonder Nine Ball seems like such an old soul.

“You could stay here for a while, you know,” Tammy offers. “If it’s too quiet at home, I mean. Lou and Deb wouldn’t mind.” Nine Ball already has a room upstairs. All of them do. (Well, Rose and Daphne share a room when they're around, but that’s by choice.)

“Lou offered.” Nine Ball admits.

“But?” Tammy prompts after a moment.

Nine Ball looks down. “I thought you might not want me here. Because of the kids. And I respect that.”

Which is so ridiculous that if Nine Ball sounded at all like her normal self, Tammy would think she was joking. But Tammy has learned over the summer that Nine Ball’s manner of speaking is a pretty good barometer of her comfort level. When she’s relaxed, it’s almost one hundred percent Bajan, to the point that Tammy sometimes has a hard time understanding her. But when she’s nervous, she code-switches into the Queen’s English.

At the moment, she sounds like a BBC newscaster.

“Nine Ball,” Tammy says slowly, “if I’ve said or done something that made you think I didn’t trust you around the kids, I’m sorry. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

Nine Ball still won’t look at her. “You seemed pretty upset the night Danica asked me about my ‘funny cigarettes.’”

Tammy sighs and resists the urge to smack herself on the forehead. “I was upset, yes. But only because it’s hard to explain to a five-year-old why something harmless is illegal. Not because I think there’s anything wrong with the fact that you smoke weed. For God’s sake, when I was your age  _ I _ smoked weed.”

That finally brings Nine Ball’s head up. “Yeah?”

Tammy rolls her eyes. “Yes. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief around here, I wasn’t  _ born _ forty.”

Nine Ball’s eyes narrow. “You forty?”

And Tammy smiles, because her accent is back. “I will be in November.”

“You don’ look forty.”

“Thank you. Now can we get back to the part where you apparently thought I didn’t want you near my children? Because I really need you to be over that.”

Nine Ball holds up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Over it,” she says. “So long as we good.”

“We’re good.”

They both start eating again, and silence falls, but it’s not an uncomfortable silence. This is one of the things Tammy most appreciates about Nine Ball, actually--the fact that she doesn’t have to be constantly talking. Tammy loves the rest of the crew, but they can be incredibly loud, especially when they’re all together, and sometimes it’s a little...much.

Nine Ball refuses to let Tammy help her with the dishes, correctly pointing out that Tammy cooked. So Tammy parks herself on a barstool in a reversal of their earlier roles and watches as Nine Ball does the washing up.

“You worked in a restaurant,” she says after a few minutes, not a question. Nine Ball wields the dish sprayer like an extension of her arm.

“My firs’ job. You too?”

“Yeah. My uncle ran a restaurant in El Paso. He was only passingly familiar with child labor laws.”

Nine Ball snorts. “In our auntie’s place, you could see over the counter, you was labor.”

“Was that here or…?”

“In Bridgetown,” Nine Ball answers, finally confirming Tammy’s near-certainty about the origins of her accent.

“Your first winter here must have come as a nasty shock.”

That wins her an outright laugh. “Oh, yeah. We was  _ nah _ prepared for snow.”

“Thirty-eight million dollars buys a lot of snow-free real estate,” Tammy observes. “Yet here you are.”

“Here’s home now,” Nine Ball says, shrugging as she sets the last dish in the drainboard. “I like runnin’ my place, hangin’ out aroun’ here, havin’ people.”

Having a family, Tammy understands she means, because Tammy feels the same way.

But it obviously wouldn’t do to say that out loud, so Tammy settles for, “So, big plans for the rest of the day?”

Nine Ball turns to lean back against the counter, all loose limbs and languid smile. “Oh, you know. Roll one, smoke one.” The smile turns mischievous. “Wanna join me?”

Tammy is surprised to realize it’s a sincere offer. There’s an undercurrent of teasing, sure, but Nine Ball isn’t making fun of her, which is...interesting. She re-runs the morning in her mind, from Nine Ball’s obvious surprise at her offer of breakfast to the unexpected flirting to the way she said  _ You don’t look forty.   _

“Okay,” she says.

* * *

They end up on the roof, where a couple of freestanding canopies and a collection of mismatched deck furniture mark the boundaries of what Lou refers to, without a hint of irony, as “the lanai.” Only Debbie and Tammy recognize the origins of this terminology, and they are kind enough not to out Lou to the entire crew as a  _ Golden Girls _ fan.

Nine Ball’s preferred smoking spot is in the shade, and Tammy is glad. The afternoon feels more like July than September, and only the breeze coming in off the water makes the rooftop bearable. 

Nine Ball drags a cushion off one of the lounge chairs and tosses it down against the low wall surrounding the roof so that they can sit on it and brace their backs against the brickwork.

“This okay?”

“Sure,” Tammy answers, and quickly sits down. Hopefully she doesn’t sound as nervous as she suddenly feels. Nine Ball probably sits on this cushion all the time when she comes up here to smoke. It’s not as if she’s  _ deliberately _ arranging things so that Tammy will be practically in her lap.

Right?

Then Nine Ball peels off her hoodie, and the A-shirt underneath it rides up, and Tammy’s entire field of vision is suddenly filled with abs and ink and hipbones. Clearly the Universe is trying to kill her.

Or maybe it already has? Maybe she actually drowned in the bathtub earlier. It would explain so much. She drowned, and now she’s in...heaven? Hell? Wherever fallen angels go to strip, anyway.

Nine Ball drops into a squat in front of her, replacing the abs with deltoids and collarbones and cleavage, magnificently unaware of the effect her suddenly-half-naked self might have on mere mortals.

“Budge over,” she says, and Tammy does, and a second later they’re sitting so close that their bodies touch from shoulder to ankle. A baggie and some rolling papers appear in Nine Ball's hands like magic, and the next thing Tammy knows Nine Ball is blowing smoke up into the afternoon air and then passing the joint to her.

She does not embarrass herself by coughing. But weed must have gotten stronger in the decade she’s been out of the game, because the first hit is enough to make her slightly dizzy. Then again, maybe that’s from knowing that her lips are now right where Nine Ball’s lips were a second ago.

“Aight?” Nine Ball asks as she takes the joint back. Tammy chooses not to ask why she doesn’t just roll her own.

“Mm-hmm.”

They smoke in companionable silence, passing the joint back and forth so that their fingers touch each time, until Nine Ball takes the final drag and stubs it out against the concrete.

“Another?” she offers.

“I should stop,” Tammy admits. “But I don’t mind if you do.”

“Nah, I’m good.”

Tammy turns to look at her and finds Nine Ball looking back, and for a several seconds they just sit there staring at each other.

“You have beautiful eyes.”

It takes Tammy longer than it should to recognize her own voice, to realize that she said that out loud. Being high tends to interfere with her filter, she remembers too late. Not that it isn’t true--in the sunlight Nine Ball’s eyes are a thousand shades of green and gold and amber. They’re also more unguarded in this moment than Tammy has ever seen them, and there’s something new and soft in their depths that makes Tammy wonder what she’s thinking.

Then she doesn’t have to wonder anymore, because Nine Ball leans in and kisses her.

It’s slightly awkward at first because the angle is bad, and then both of them try to move at once and they suddenly seem to have about eleven elbows between them. But then Nine Ball’s hand comes up to cradle Tammy’s jaw, and everything falls into place, and the kiss does zero to sixty so fast it leaves Tammy breathless. As in, she literally has to come up for air after a few minutes because she’s dizzy.  _ From kissing. _ She’d forgotten that was possible.

She’s forgotten quite a lot of things, actually, but Nine Ball seems more than happy to remind her, and they sort of fall into each other in a tangled heap of limbs, half on and half off the cushion like a couple of kids in the back seat of a Chevy. Not that Tammy is complaining. This is the hottest thing that’s happened to her in ten years (okay, longer), and Nine Ball’s hands aren’t even under her clothes yet.

Then Nine Ball suddenly stops--she looks like it’s killing her, but she stops--and looks up at Tammy and says, “Wait.”

Tammy doesn’t want to wait. Tammy wants Nine Ball to go back to doing that thing with her tongue. But she stops, because when a girl says  _ wait _ that’s what you do.

“How high are you?” Nine Ball asks, serious as a heart attack.

“What?”

“How high are you?” she repeats. “‘Cause it feels a little wrong doin’ this after I smoked you up.”

And suddenly Tammy is blinking back tears while also extremely turned on, which she’s pretty sure is a first for her. “Not nearly that high,” she manages, when what she really wants to say is  _ You amaze me. _

Nine Ball studies her intently for a long moment, then nods, apparently satisfied.

They go back to kissing, slower and less frantic now, and manage to sort themselves into a more comfortable position. It’s been a long time since Tammy’s been with a woman, but Nine Ball seems just as turned on as she is, so she figures she must be doing something right. Then Nine Ball slots her thigh up between Tammy’s and finally gets her hands underneath her shirt, and things are very right indeed. She does her best to return the favor, but she goes over the edge too soon, shaking and gasping for air as her peripheral vision whites out for a few seconds.

“God,” she murmurs when she can speak again, this time seeing the filter-failure coming and not even trying to stop it, “you kiss better than most people fuck.”

Nine Ball laughs, and Tammy realizes she’s never heard her  _ really _ laugh before. It shakes her entire body, and it’s beautiful, and Tammy knows with suddenly blinding clarity that she wants to spend the rest of her life making this girl laugh this way. She’s in real trouble here, and if it’s not mutual she’s about to get her heart shattered into so many pieces she’ll never be okay again.

But that is a concern for later, not for right now when Nine Ball is laid out beneath her in an undershirt that exposes several acres of skin just begging to be kissed. Tammy applies herself wholeheartedly to the task at hand.

She does pretty well, she thinks, for being twenty years out of practice. Certainly Nine Ball seems to have no complaints, not if the sound she makes when she comes is any indication. Tammy adds it to the list of sounds she wants to hear again, right there next to that amazing laugh. Then she lays her head on Nine Ball’s chest to catch her breath, and the sound of her heartbeat adds itself to the list.

One of them is eventually going to have to say something, of course, and Nine Ball gets there first, speaking softly as her fingers card through Tammy’s hair. “Nex’ time, I vote we do this in a bed.”

“Seconded,” Tammy agrees, and assumes that  _ Next time _ is the most Nine Ball is comfortable saying out loud about whatever exactly they have going on here. It would be enough, for now.

But she’s wrong.

“Would you stay?” Nine Ball murmurs, barely audible.

A wave of fierce tenderness rises up in Tammy, and she pushes up on her elbows to look into those thousand-color eyes again. “Of course I would stay.”

Nine Ball draws her down into another kiss, but after a few minutes Tammy reluctantly pulls away, having noticed the lengthening shadows.

“What time is it?” she asks, forcing herself to sit up.

“No idea. Constance got my watch.”

“Actually, I think Danica has your watch.”

Nine Ball laughs as she levers herself to a seated position as well. “Lord, we ‘bout to have our hands  _ full _ with that girl.”

We.

Nine Ball doesn’t even seem to be aware of having said it, but Tammy definitely heard it. And it’s possible that she meant the larger  _ we, _ the whole crew. But Tammy doesn’t think so, and if she’s right--she really hopes she’s right--then she’s eventually going to have to talk to Debbie and Lou about adding a fourth mom to the roster.

“Tammy?”

Tammy snaps out of her reverie to find Nine Ball standing over her, one hand extended down to help her up.

“Sorry. Woolgathering.”

Nine Ball pulls her effortlessly to her feet, kisses her one more time, then busies herself returning the cushion to its proper place.

They go inside and get cleaned up (separately, because both of them in the same bathroom right now would definitely lead to something they wouldn’t want the kids to walk in on), and by the time the minivan pulls up outside they’re in the kitchen starting dinner, the very picture of innocence.

Not that it’s likely to be long before someone notices what’s up. But for the moment, it’s nice to have a secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I had a plan for this chapter...and then Nine Ball showed up. Her dialogue gave me absolute fits, so if you feel like leaving a comment I'd be particularly interested in whether you thought that worked. (Truthfully, after two weeks of wrestling with this and ending up with more pages on the cutting room floor than in the actual chapter, I'd just be overjoyed if you left a comment.)


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